Forum - View topicNEWS: SAG-AFTRA Union Goes on Strike Against 11 Video Game Companies
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daoutlaw
Posts: 9 Location: California |
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except they don't always work - http://www.forbes.com/sites/rickungar/2012/12/11/right-to-work-laws-explained-debunked-demystified/#472cc5381f38 You even said 'but what's often missed in this equation is that the cost of living is much, much lower in these states thus more affordable.', California is anything but affordable. Housing is still expensive especially around LA and San Francisco. So yeah, how about NO on Right-to-Work and let's all just see where this goes. |
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AiddonValentine
Posts: 2209 |
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Except it isn't, it's standard practice in acting. Furthermore they lay out certain conditions by restricting it to at a 2 million unit minimum with it capping off at 8 million. That way small companies don't get bled dry while Anyway, I do hope this works out well and VAs are able to get at least some of the benefits they're demanding. This needed to happen because the games industry's labor practices are disgusting. Grueling hours, terrible pay, and mass layoffs are an industry standard on the developer side of things and it needs to stop. The companies SAG is boycotting are not starving artists, they're corporations worth hundreds of millions if not outright billions. They have more than enough to share with VAs as well as their employees. |
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StrangeIslands
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How about you actually read the article you posted? That article is actually quite biased in favor of unions/left wing politics. Do you ever wonder why California is so damn expensive? It's because the government there over regulates everything (Including the economy). Texas (A right to work state) is governed differently. It's not a perfect state by any means, but it's a better place to do business than California. How about you think real hard and research these different points of view before saying no to these laws just because one leftist article said so. |
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daoutlaw
Posts: 9 Location: California |
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'Abby Rapoport, writing in the American Spectator, describes the results of the Lafer/Allegretto study— “Rather than increasing job opportunities, the state saw companies relocate out of Oklahoma. In high-tech industries and those service industries “dependent on consumer spending in the local economy” the laws appear to have actually damaged growth. At the end of the decade, 50,000 fewer Oklahoma residents had jobs in manufacturing. Perhaps most damning, Lafer and Allegretto could find no evidence that the legislation had a positive impact on employment rates. “It will not bring new jobs in, but it will result in less wages and benefits for everybody including non-union workers,” says Lafer.”' I mean, if you don't like Forbes article there are other sources that speaks against RTW: http://www.epi.org/research/right-to-work/ http://wrongforeveryone.org/more-facts-on-right-to-work/ probably was my mistake to link Forbes, not a smart thing to do nowadays |
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Panon
Posts: 242 |
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It's not only to know the full scope of their role, it's to know what game they are working on at all. As it currently stands that can be completely withheld from actors, and it's a tactic to suppress their pay and cripple their ability to negotiate - hard to ask for a better deal to be part of a sure hit AAA game when you don't know what you're recording lines for. |
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Mr. Oshawott
Posts: 6773 |
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Well...It has been a long time coming...and Electronic Arts became the first target of SAG-AFTRA's strike.
I hope the strike will get EA and the other gaming companies targeted to revise their outdated contracts and offer the VA's fairer compensation. Voice-acting can get really dangerous with all those shouting, screaming sessions lasting for hours on end. |
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SNaGem
Posts: 41 |
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Anime as a general rule is non-union due to its generally lower profitability. So a lot of the big game union VAs either (1) don't do anime (2) used to do it once upon a time but don't do it anymore (Troy Baker, David Kaye) (3) does a lot of non-anime stuff but will pop up in union productions (Steve Blum, Kari Wahlgren, Crispin Freeman) Typically, game dubs done in LA follow the same non-union structure, which is why a lot of them can sound same-y. But yeah, your anime comment makes no sense to me, not sure what you're getting at. |
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One-Eye
Posts: 2261 |
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So, you're saying that voice acting is not part of the "experience"? Might as well get any joe-blow off the street to do it then right? Or why even bother with VA's and let's just make it all dialogue text based? What good actors do is contribute to the success of a game, which can then lead to sequels (added sales?). I get a terrific kick out of Brina Palencia playing Moxxi in the Borderlands series. I'm reminded that Claudia Black was praised for her role in Dragon Age Origins and many fans wanted to see her character return. I guess that added to the experience? Maybe? So when gaming companies show up at Game Cons with VAs in tow and sit down at a panel they are not contributing to selling the game? Then you have VAs that go to conventions sometimes for self-promotion and people show up to see them. I guess they have fans, perhaps? Maybe those fans enjoyment is enhanced when their favorite VAs play a role? Sure most people aren't going to buy the game just for the VA it is the whole package after all , but to act that they don't add value to the game? I know when there is good dialogue and good acting along with the game I'm more likely to recommend it to friends. Does that not add value or contribute to potential sales? If the voice acting is praised by game reviewers does that not potentially add to sales too? I also seem to recall some people desiring that games being adapted to anime would have the same VAs. Maybe a selling point for some people? Yea, the VA by themselves aren't going to sell the game or guarantee its success, but I don't think you can dismiss that there is value being added by good voice acting which contributes to sales. |
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Snakebit1995
Posts: 842 |
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You completely misquoted me that's not what I said at all. Yes Voice Acting adds experience to a game, but rarely, if ever, will someone purchase a game because a specific VA is in it. I love Matt Mercer, but i would never spend 50 bucks on a game just to hear him. |
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SNaGem
Posts: 41 |
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While this is true, voice actors aren't claiming you are buying the game because of a specific voice actor. Such activity is only a small amount of superfans, and doesn't drive the industry. But because they add value to the game and can make story modes emotional, they feel they should get residuals for super successful games since it's very likely for large blockbusters, good VO helped the experience. Any of Naughty Dog's games are a great example - The Last of Us is a fun game on its own, but without the great performances from Troy Baker and Ashley Johnson, it wouldn't have resonated nearly as well as it did. |
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Levitz9
Posts: 1022 Location: Puerto Rico |
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Also worth consideration: many union voice-actors do get residuals for Western cartoons they appear in--but video games, inexplicably, are exempt from that. Maurice LeMarche is still cashing checks from that time he impersonated Mel Gibson on Animaniacs (among other things--credit where it's due, and all. #OrsonWelles), Richard Horvitz still sees money from Invader Zim, but Jennifer Hale only got $757 for every four hours she voiced Commander Shephard in the Mass Effect series? Hell, Steve Blum probably got more money for his work on Ben 10 alone than he did for all the times he's been Wolverine in video games. This could be the start of a much-needed revolution in gaming: the better-treatment of the human side of it all. The insane crunch hours devs go through is inexcusable. It's about damn time people get carried to task over it. It's damned hypocritical to argue that the work VAs do is disposable only for people to go monkeypoo over any given VA appearing at a convention. |
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Billy Toplady
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I wonder if in the end, they'll get us (end users) milked more to cover that compensation expense?
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One-Eye
Posts: 2261 |
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You said:
This seems to be a continuation of what you stated earlier:
Also just because the "guys who made the game" don't get residuals doesn't mean the actors shouldn't and it doesn't mean that the other developers should be left out either. It will be interesting to see how this plays out. |
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BadNewsBlues
Posts: 5934 |
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They're seldom praised for that especially by gamers themselves who can never not complain about the acting specifically the voice acting. That's why none of the Mario games post Sunshine have full voice acting.
The guys who design and develop the games yes anyone else? not really.
You can stop the grueling work hours (which is occasionally the fault of whoever is in charge of the developer team), and terrible pay (also the same). But you won't stop massive layoffs as those happen for various uncontrollable reasons the most common of which is the game the company is making not selling enough. |
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pikabot
Posts: 168 |
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Game devs at all levels should get residual payments when the product that they worked on goes on to sell millions of copies. Unfortunately, game developers don't have a union to fight for those rights on their behalf. Actors do. And, through decades of hard fighting against hostile management, they managed to make residual payments standard practice for acting in pretty much all fields...except video games, where payment is currently governed by an agreement that hasn't been updated in twenty years. That's right, the current agreement was drafted up back when this was the voice-acting gold standard. Voice acting was done at a lower standard, and was a much smaller part of a game project in those days. Motion capture wasn't even a thing! And you're fooling yourself if you think voice acting doesn't help a game ship units. No, few people will buy a game specifically because a voice actor they like is in it; but if the voice acting is poor, the review scores and sales will suffer. Beyond: Two Souls (for some reason) sold more than a million copies in the first three months. Do you honestly think that anyone would have given a shit about that game if it wasn't for Ellen Page and Willem DeFoe acting their butts off? Would Portal have been a runaway success if it wasn't for Ellen McClain's Glados? Voice acting is an important part of the modern-day game package, and when they contribute to a game's success they deserve a piece of that. Do programmers, modellers, concept artists, and other developers who also worked on the game deserve a piece of the pie as well? Of course they do! But those people aren't part of SAG-AFTRA. SAG-AFTRA can't fight that battle on their behalf. If they want residual payments when the game they poured their time and energy into goes on to make their corporate masters enough money to swim in Scrooge McDuck-style, there's a pretty clear path before them: form their own union that can fight on their behalf. And I really think they should do that! There are a lot of workplace problems in the game industry, like crunch, unpaid overtime, and unpaid overtime on crunch, that a union could help solve. But until they do, residual payments are never going to materialize out of nowhere, and their situation is pretty immaterial to what the SAG-AFTRA guys are doing.
This claim borders on Dadaism. The explicit objective of so-called "right-to-work" laws is to weaken unions by sapping them of resources without reducing the amount of services they need to provide. Also, you really think that article has a left-wing bias? Forbes is a business magazine, for crying out loud! Can you dispute even a single claim made in the article about the Taft-Hartley act? |
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